Writings of Lactantius. Fragments
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Text edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson and
first published by T&T Clark in Edinburgh in 1867. Additional
introductionary material and notes provided for the American
edition by A. Cleveland Coxe, 1886.
Fragments of Lactantius
I. Fear, love, joy, sadness, lust, eager desire, anger, pity,
emulation, admiration,--these motions or affections of the mind exist
from the beginning of man's creation by the Lord; and they were
usefully and advantageously introduced into human nature, that by
governing himself by these with method, and in accordance with reason,
man may be able, by acting manfully, to exercise those good qualities,
by means of which he would justly have deserved to receive from the
Lord eternal life. For these affections of the mind being restrained
within their proper limits, that is, being rightly employed, produce
at present good qualities, and in the future eternal rewards. But when
they advance [2004] beyond their boundaries, that is, when they turn
aside to an evil course, then vices and iniquities come forth, and
produce everlasting punishments. [2005]
II. Within our memory, also, Lactantius speaks of metres,--the
pentameter (he says) and the tetrameter. [2006]
III. Firmianus, writing to Probus on the metres of comedies, thus
speaks: "For as to the question which you proposed concerning the
metres of comedies, I also know that many are of opinion that the
plays of Terence in particular have not the metre of Greek
comedy,--that is, of Menander, Philemon, and Diphilus, which consist
of trimeter verses; for our ancient writers of comedies, in the
modulation of their plays, preferred to follow Eupolis, Cratinus, and
Aristophanes, as has been before said." That there is a measure--that
is, metre [2007] --in the plays of Terence and Plautus, and of the
other comic and tragic writers, let these declare: Cicero, Scaurus,
and Firmianus. [2008]
IV. We will bring forward the sentiments of our Lactantius, which he
expressed in words in his third volume to Probus on this subject. The
Gauls, he says, were from ancient times called Galatians, from the
whiteness of their body; and thus the Sibyl terms them. And this is
what the poet intended to signify when he said,--
"Gold collars deck their milk-white necks," [2009]
when he might have used the word white. It is plain that from this the
province was called Galatia, in which, on their arrival in it, the
Gauls united themselves with Greeks, from which circumstance that
region was called Gallogræcia, and afterwards Galatia. And it is no
wonder if he said this concerning the Galatians, and related that a
people of the West, having passed over so great a distance in the
middle of the earth, settled in a region of the East. [2010]
Footnotes
[2004] Affluentes.
[2005] From Muratorii Antiquit. Ital. med. æv.
[2006] From Maxim. Victorin. de carmine heroico. Cf. Hieron., Catal.,
c. 80. We have also another treatise, which is entitled "On Grammar."
[2007] me'tron.
[2008] From Rufinus, the grammarian, on Comic Metres, p. 2712.
[2009] Virg., Æn., viii. 660.
[2010] From Hieron., Commentar. in ep. ad Gal., l. ii., opp. ed.
Vallars. viii. 1, p. 426. Hieron., De Viris Illus., c. 80: we have
"four books of epistles to Probus."
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